Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish

In what is considered one of the greatest commencement speeches ever given, even if Aaron Sorkin did have a hand in penning it, Steve Jobs tells three stories to the graduating 2005 graduating class of Stanford University.

All three of these stories have deep meaning for me. Steve talks about dropping out of college so he could stop spending his working-class parents’ hard earned savings, and so he could drop-in to classes he cared about and was interested in. One of those was a calligraphy class that taught him the beauty and construction of typefaces. Ten years later when he and Steve Wozniak were inventing the Mac, those lessons led to the inclusion of carefully curated fonts that created the desktop publishing capabilities we all take for granted and led to the Mac’s cult status among designers. He could not possibly have seen that looking forward. In fact he was sure that calligraphy class was a whimsical distraction that would never lead to anything meaningful. It was only looking back that he could “connect the dots” to see the path he had taken.

He goes on to tell the class to have faith that the dots will connect. Have faith in something: the universe, destiny, karma, god, whatever. Because faith gives us the confidence to make the hard decisions, take the paths less travelled, stay true to ourselves when it requires breaking with dogma or convention.

“Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” – Steve Jobs